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Lentil Curry
Boil half a pint of lentils in a quart of water until quite soft and pulpy; set them aside. Cut up an onion into thin rings, fry them in an ounce of butter, and add to them a well-prepared curry sauce (see CURRY SAUCE.) Then put in the lentils, let it boil for about twenty minutes, and serve with a dish of plain boiled rice.
A straightforward dal in Victorian dress, held together by a cross-reference the modern reader no longer has to hand. The only real decisions are which lentil to use and how thick to let the finished dish get.
- Half a pint of lentilsDry goods were measured by volume. An imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, so reckon on a generous cup, somewhere around 8 oz. Boiled in a quart of water it will yield a soft pur as which is what the recipe asks for ("quite soft and pulpy").
- Which lentil"Lentils" in an English kitchen of this date often meant the split red lentil, sold as the Egyptian lentil, which collapses in 20 to 25 minutes. Brown or green lentils take longer, 35 to 45 minutes, and hold their shape much better; French green lentils will not give the pulpy texture the recipe asks for.
- The missing curry sauceThe original leans on a separate entry. A period curry sauce is a butter-and-flour roux cooked with chopped onion and curry powder, moistened with stock, sometimes with a spoonful of chutney, coconut milk or apple, and simmered until smooth. Any modern curry base will do the same job; allow about 1½ cups of sauce for this quantity of lentils.
- Season it yourselfNo salt is specified; the curry powder and stock would have carried some of their own. Salt the lentils only near the end of cooking and taste after the sauce goes in.
- "Let it boil for twenty minutes"Lentil purée catches and scorches easily once thickened. Keep it at a bare simmer, stir often, and loosen with water or stock if it stiffens past the consistency of a thick soup.
- The onionsFry the rings in the ounce (2 tablespoons) of butter slowly until genuinely browned and sweet, not just softened; they carry much of the flavour.
- YieldServes four with plain boiled rice, or three as a main dish. It thickens considerably on standing and reheats well with a splash of water.
Curry entered English cookery books in the era of the East India Company, and by the late nineteenth century had been thoroughly domesticated: commercial curry powder, a flour-thickened sauce, and boiled rice on a separate dish. Lentils were cheap, keepable and filling, and were promoted in Victorian household manuals both as economy and as Lenten or vegetarian fare, often on the strength of their supposed nitrogen or "flesh-forming" content. The dish is essentially a dal, though it arrives at it by way of an English roux rather than by tempering spices in hot fat, and the result is closer to a thick curried lentil soup. Red lentils were widely sold in Britain at the time, and a lentil-based proprietary invalid food, Revalenta Arabica, was heavily advertised.